We got a couple of these rifles for a film we did last year, now I have one of them ready to test next time I go to the range. Looking at the bolt, it is clear that this caliber is pushing the limits of the 700 action, the three rings of steel surrounding your cartridge are down to about 2 1/2 when you realize how thin the bolt's has become.

there never is any pressure on the bolt nose unless there is a case rupture. at that point, the idea is to have the counterbore "plugged" to limit the gas and brass from coming back around the bolt body. it is not meant to increase the ring strength due to chamber pressure. you could cut the bolt nose completely off and the rifle would still be safe to fire under normal conditions. you may have some feeding and extraction issues though.

there never is any pressure on the bolt nose unless there is a case rupture. at that point, the idea is to have the counterbore "plugged" to limit the gas and brass from coming back around the bolt body. it is not meant to increase the ring strength due to chamber pressure. you could cut the bolt nose completely off and the rifle would still be safe to fire under normal conditions. you may have some feeding and extraction issues though.

I have a 700 rem that belonged to the "Housten Warehouse" guy...it has a custom bolt that uses a model 70 push feed style bolt nose, with the model 70 push feed extractor, no counterbore in the barrel at all. If you get into the pressure range where the "3 rings of steel" come into play your in some deep doo-doo IMHO :-).

Nope. Just like I said the customer is always right. Even if he's really really wrong. He's paying for it and using it. Not me. I still true the odd action, I still flute barrels, I still turn out buggy whip custom guns, I still make 18 pound sheep rifles with 28 inch barrels. I do it because the customer is ALWAYS right. Give me money and I'll do whatever stupid thing you ask.

Well, exactly what it says I guess. If per say, you want to have me vulcanize a roadrunner for a couple thousand dollars so he won't burn his little foots on the Arizona desert sand, I'm certainly not going to tell you its a dumb idea. I'm just going to find a rubber supplier and find a way to get it done. Just because its the wrong thing to do in my mind, does not mean that its not a GREAT idea to you. And as long as you're satisfied you might bring in another 10,000 roadrunners to do. A lot of the work I do with guns is what I consider to be unnecessary and useless. Actually some times it borders on harming the firearm cosmetically or function wise. But I just warn the customer and if he still wants it, I do it.

Of course there is the little matter of all the bunny humpers out there that might think you are harming roadrunners but we can cross that bridge when we get to it.

The 338 Lapua is pushing the limits of a Rem 700 Magnum action. Would I build one and either shoot it or pass on to a customer....NO spelled out N O. The Lapua is a great round but has no business having a magnum Rem action bolt face bored to accept it. If you think I am full of shit, go read some input from Jerry Stiller, BAT Machine, and Preston at Surgeon. I am a nobody, these guys know. Just passing it along.

The 338 Lapua is pushing the limits of a Rem 700 Magnum action. Would I build one and either shoot it or pass on to a customer....NO spelled out N O. The Lapua is a great round but has no business having a magnum Rem action bolt face bored to accept it. If you think I am full of shit, go read some input from Jerry Stiller, BAT Machine, and Preston at Surgeon. I am a nobody, these guys know. Just passing it along.

Well, the 700 will handle the pressure. A standard belted magnum and an Ultra Magnum or Lapua case will both fail, rupture and ruin the bolt at the same pressures. That's just the brass turning from a solid to a solid liquid and flowing. The lug failure would inevitably occur first with the Ultra Magnum or Lapua case because of the greater piston size which would result in the greatest bolt thrust. But this would happen far beyond the normal excepted operating pressure of commercial rounds or even most idiots hot hand loads. Lets face it Remington, Sako and Tikka would never make them if they were unsafe in this day and age of people suing over slipping on a wet floor. The simple fact of the matter is that none of theses rifles have actions that are long enough or wide enough to properly use and feed the cartridges without using straight line ram feed and seating bullets deep. But they do make them so people do buy them. I have no doubt that one of the custom action makers will soon just scale up their commercial turn bolt actions and make them 1/10th of an inch wider and 1/2 inch longer and everyone will live happily ever after.

Nope. Just like I said the customer is always right. Even if he's really really wrong. He's paying for it and using it. Not me. I still true the odd action, I still flute barrels, I still turn out buggy whip custom guns, I still make 18 pound sheep rifles with 28 inch barrels. I do it because the customer is ALWAYS right. Give me money and I'll do whatever stupid thing you ask.

I wish I thought more like you speerchucker (sometimes anyway ) but, in the last couple of months, here is some of the work I turned down, even with lot's and lot's of hundred dolłar bills flashed around...

Full custom 7mm STW with with a 21" barrel...

Full custom 300 Ultra Mag with 18" barrel...

Full custom 300 Weatherby Magnum with pencil weight 20" barrel...

Full custom 338 Lapua with 21" barrel...

Yes - I could build them! Yes - I could use the money but, these four specific cartridges are not and were not designed for "short barrels" and I just flat out refused to build them!

Now, put them same four cartridges in a minimum length barrel of 28" and I would be all over it like a chicken on a junebug, no questions asked....

this rifle is about 31.5" with the stock folded and a rch under 40" ready to shoot. it is easy to navigate over/around obsticles and easy to enter/exit vehicles with and i have personally made accurate hits out to 1500 yards with it. i guess having a rifle that not only meets but exceeds the intended use is "wrong. wrong. wrong."

I wish I thought more like you speerchucker (sometimes anyway ) but, in the last couple of months, here is some of the work I turned down, even with lot's and lot's of hundred dolłar bills flashed around...

Full custom 7mm STW with with a 21" barrel...

Full custom 300 Ultra Mag with 18" barrel...

Full custom 300 Weatherby Magnum with pencil weight 20" barrel...

Full custom 338 Lapua with 21" barrel...

Yes - I could build them! Yes - I could use the money but, these four specific cartridges are not and were not designed for "short barrels" and I just flat out refused to build them!

Now, put them same four cartridges in a minimum length barrel of 28" and I would be all over it like a chicken on a junebug, no questions asked....

let me ask you this, did you atleast suggest a different calliber that will match the external and terminal ballistics in a package the same size as they were requesting? if so, what did you suggest? what would you suggest would shoot the same 338 progectile at the same muzzle velocity in a 21" barrel as a 338 lapua? and why exactly do you suggest it? what are the bennifits over the lapua?

I wish I thought more like you speerchucker (sometimes anyway ) but, in the last couple of months, here is some of the work I turned down, even with lot's and lot's of hundred dolłar bills flashed around...

I wish I thought more like you speerchucker (sometimes anyway ) but, in the last couple of months, here is some of the work I turned down, even with lot's and lot's of hundred dolłar bills flashed around...

Full custom 7mm STW with with a 21" barrel...

Full custom 300 Ultra Mag with 18" barrel...

Full custom 300 Weatherby Magnum with pencil weight 20" barrel...

Full custom 338 Lapua with 21" barrel...

Yes - I could build them! Yes - I could use the money but, these four specific cartridges are not and were not designed for "short barrels" and I just flat out refused to build them!

Now, put them same four cartridges in a minimum length barrel of 28" and I would be all over it like a chicken on a junebug, no questions asked....

Well, Your market is obviously much different than mine. Or you don't need work to make a living. I don't have the luxury of turning away work just because I think it's wrong. And yes I do try to convince people to consider other options. But in the long run it boils down to making $200 per day to meet the break even point where rent, phone, power, business license's, insurance, accountant, lawyer, disposable tooling and replacement tooling are paid for. What I make after that, less 25% for tax's is what I take home. In short I have to turn about $100,000 each year in labor to take home $30,000. My shop hours to the public are 9-4 seven days a week and closed for 2-3 days every long weekend. 10 years ago there were 10 gunsmiths working in the city of Edmonton and now there is 1. In 1979 we had about 280,000 hunters in Alberta. Last year we had 80,000. There are still a lot of hobby gunsmiths working out of their garages and basements so if I turn something away it simply falls to one of the others and the larger foothold I give to them, will be less for me.

Remington's website does indeed leave a lot of gaps of what is actually available to buy. Some of their guns they wanna keep secret...

Remington has everything they make on their public web sites and you don't need a decoder ring number to get in like you do with Janes and some of the other special equipment sites. They simply have separate sites for each so no combat wambats are offended by the fact that Remington sells guns which are designed to kill poor defenseless forest creatures. You do however need a password to get into some of Remingtons partner sites and you need special permissions to buy some of the stuff.

ADD NOTE: Rumor has it that Remington is now selling rebuilt SWS Systems semie public. Service and Gaurd members can now apply to buy them.

Check out rifle barrels.com
Dan has done a bunch of testing on this issue and found the remy can fail with a lapua. I wouldn't use one, they were never intended to go that big, neither was the savage. I have had customers tell me they wanted their savages rebarreled after 1500 or so rds and you have to cut the barrel off due to the swelling. Scary to me.

Check out rifle barrels.com
Dan has done a bunch of testing on this issue and found the remy can fail with a lapua. I wouldn't use one, they were never intended to go that big, neither was the savage. I have had customers tell me they wanted their savages rebarreled after 1500 or so rds and you have to cut the barrel off due to the swelling. Scary to me.

There is no commercial action to date that is scaled up to properly use the big 416 case. Not the Mauser, the first bolt action it was used in. Nor the Remington, Sako and Tikka it is currently offered in and most certainly not the Weatherby Mark V which was the first commercial application where a belt was added to the 416 case. On all of these actions the bolt thrust is at near maximum of what can be delivered without causing lug galling. Also the chamber thickness is getting to the very minimum and exceeding recommended loads in any of these actions can cause chamber swelling.

There in lays the problem. People are forever exceeding the limits. If you insist on treating the 416 case the same way you would abuse a 30-06 case you need to go to an overkill, custom commercial action like the Barrett, McMillan or like system.

I have never heard anyone speak highly of the weatherby but 20 yrs ago before the long range craze my dad and I built a couple 338-378 kubli Kahn rifles for 1000 plus. We got some makeshift load data from jarret And the first rd exploded. We cut the barrel off because of the swelling. The only other thing that broke was the very thin lip around the face of the bolt. I put a new barrel on, welded the lip back together and have been shooting it ever since. In my book weatherby is one of the toughest best actions ever. The action design and quality saved my life. If the lugs would have sheared I'd be dead. In the day of all these much bigger custom actions I would definitely go that route. More barrel tenion, bigger diam action and bolt all good

There is no commercial action to date that is scaled up to properly use the big 416 case. Not the Mauser, the first bolt action it was used in. Nor the Remington, Sako and Tikka it is currently offered in and most certainly not the Weatherby Mark V which was the first commercial application where a belt was added to the 416 case. On all of these actions the bolt thrust is at near maximum of what can be delivered without causing lug galling.

Not entirely true. Savage went to a larger thread tenon for their short-mags and ultra mags, and they factory chamber the Lapua. Granted, it is not exactly scaled up PROPERLY in all directions, it is bigger in the direction that counts. Girth. Just a little bit more wall thickness between you and certain loss of body parts.

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